tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72395775125980380092020-06-06T08:50:06.634-07:00The Nine and Thirty KingdomsRPG plans, designs and ideasTalysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.comBlogger2015125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-4531937151246181572020-06-04T11:31:00.002-07:002020-06-04T11:32:24.098-07:00Behind Custom Races<p>Here’s a behind-the-scenes look at <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/custom-fantasy-races-thoughts.html">custom races</a> and their <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/06/custom-fantasy-races-variants.html">variants</a>. What was I thinking?</p><p><strong>What’s a Race?</strong></p><p>Most modern versions of class-and-level exploration fantasy games have moved towards a standard formula: <strong>Ability Scores + Race + Class = Character</strong>. There may be a few additional steps in some games (<strong>Feats</strong>, <strong>Skills</strong>, and <strong>Backgrounds</strong>.) Every single step is necessary, and every single step makes the final character better in some way.</p><p>I reject that approach.</p><p>Races aren’t necessary. You could play elves and dwarves without any rules for race at all, but by just saying “I’m an elf” and acting like an elf. The rules come second. <strong>Races are built on class combos</strong>. In a sense, the race doesn’t exist at all, but is the name we give to that combo. The culture is then built around that concept.</p><p><strong>Level Limits</strong></p><p>In exchange for having access to two classes more or less simultaneously, the race by default can’t advance as far in either class. I based races on <strong>OD&amp;D</strong> elves, limited to <strong>M-U 8/F 4</strong> in terms of levels. I generalized this to <em>Primary 8/Secondary 4</em> so that you can swap in other classes to make new races.</p><p><a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/orc-and-half-orc-player-characters.html">Orcs</a>, you will notice, are basically the inverse of elves, with Fighter as the primary class. Since bookish magic-users seemed like a poor fit for the orc concept, I created a custom class, Shaman, as a better match.</p><p><strong>Racial Abilities</strong></p><p>I split racial abilities into two types, innate and cultural, for two reasons:</p><ol><li>To shift the focus to cultural abilities, which have fewer limitations;</li><li>To allow cultural ability swaps for more variety (“raised by dwarves” granting dwarven cultural abilities to non-dwarves.)</li></ol><p>Innate abilities are usually paired with disadvantages, to make them less of a focus. In fact, I’m tempted to increase the limitation, requiring <em>any</em> strong ability to be paired with a disadvantage. Players should not be taking races as part of a build strategy to get bonus abilities.</p><p><strong>Exceeding Limits</strong></p><p>Fantasy races are restricted to two classes <em>at the start</em> and have <em>level limits</em>, but I stated that these are <strong>perceptual</strong> limits. No non-human can become a name-level Fighter because humans don’t want to be ruled over by non-humans. No elf can be a 9th level M-U because <em>humans</em> think of themselves as better at everything and impose this lack of confidence in non-human abilities on the non-humans. No dwarf can become a druid because dwarven culture doesn’t have druids. No halfling can become a 5th level fighter because humans don’t think of short people as intimidating.</p><p>However, I hinted at a procedure for breaking those restrictions as part of role-playing. Characters can attempt to persuade NPCs to train them in a “forbidden” class. Characters can make the local population feel confident in their ability to excel.</p><p>The process is the same for all cases: do something to win over the NPC or the general population and make a reaction roll. In the case of level limits, roll every time the character increases in level, or once a year after hitting the level limit. On <strong>Good</strong> or better, they break the limit.</p><p><img src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons license"></p><blockquote><p>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br>Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br>International</a><br>(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</p></blockquote> Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-80018367659760551892020-06-01T08:59:00.001-07:002020-06-01T09:00:28.638-07:00Custom Fantasy Races: VariantsA continuation of my thoughts on <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/custom-fantasy-races-thoughts.html">custom races</a>. The previous post focused on pure non-human races, but that idea can be expanded.<br /><br /><strong>Human Sub-Races</strong><br /><br />Because “race” in fantasy RPGs is not really about biological differences, but tweaks to character concepts, we can use races for barbarians or other outsiders to the core human cultures. Define languages and other cultural abilities first, skip innate abilities, and limit the sub-culture to one <em>combat</em> and one <em>magic-using</em> class, with one of those as the primary.<br /><br />Starting characters must begin as one of these two classes or any non-combat (talent) class. Level limits are the same:<br /><ul><li>Primary Class: <strong>Level 8</strong></li><li>Secondary Class: <strong>Level 4</strong></li><li>Non-Combat Classes: <strong>Unlimited</strong></li></ul>However, class and level limits are not biological, but <em>perceptual.</em>&nbsp;Since sub-cultures are in actuality human, characters from sub-cultures can switch to any class available to the core culture once they have lived in that culture for a while and found training. Level limits can be exceeded once the character is no longer seen as an outsider (a <strong>Good</strong> or better reaction, checked every time the character while living/adventuring in one area, or once a year after hitting the level limit.)<br /><br />If there are custom classes unique to a human sub-culture, the same rules apply to characters from the setting’s core cultures trying to switch to that class. Characters must learn the native language of a culture before they can gain the approval and acceptance of a sub-culture, however.<br /><br /><strong>Lineages and Cults</strong><br /><br />Within the central civilized area of a setting, there may actually be “fringe” groups that operate within the core culture. For example, descendants of a family line may be known for their special skills and talents, or a cult may teach its members a jealously-guarded secret talent.<br /><br />Because a lineage or cult is part of the main culture, there are no class or level restrictions on characters that start with that background. However, the lineage/cult can still be treated as a fantasy race.<br /><ul><li>They may have a <strong>secret</strong> or <strong>private language</strong>,</li><li>They may have special training (<strong>cultural abilities</strong>,)</li><li>There may be an <strong>innate ability</strong> restricted to their bloodline or cult members,</li><li>There may even be a <strong>custom class</strong> restricted to their family or to cult members.</li></ul><strong>Innate abilities</strong> should be rare. If the ability is restricted to a bloodline, it cannot be learned, but cannot be lost, either. If it’s restricted to cult members, it will be lost if the character breaks away or is expelled from the cult, but on the other hand, it can also be learned if a character joins a cult and proves their loyalty (<strong>Good</strong> or better reaction, rolled once per level gained after becoming a cult member.) <strong>Custom classes</strong> can also be made available to former outsiders after joining a cult or being made a family member through adoption or marriage.<br /><br /><strong>Half-Human Races</strong><br /><br />The offspring of a human and non-human, or a true race that resembles the hypothetical offspring of a human and non-human, has the same primary class and secondary classes as its non-human “parent” race, but adds <strong>tertiary classes</strong>, which are any classes otherwise closed to their non-human parent. The level limits are:<br /><ul><li>Primary Class: <strong>Level 8</strong></li><li>Secondary Class: <strong>Level 6</strong></li><li>Tertiary Classes: <strong>Level 4</strong></li><li>Non-Combat Classes: <strong>Unlimited</strong></li></ul>If the non-human parent’s secondary class was a Cleric/Priest variant and the pure Cleric/Priest class is normally closed to non-humans in the setting, a half-human race adds Cleric as another secondary class.<br /><br />Mixtures of two non-human races get more complicated. Basically, all classes open to either parent race are available, but the level limit is based on the average of the level limits for both parents. If both parent races treat a given class as a primary class, the limit is <strong>Level 8</strong>. If one treat the class as primary and the other treats it as secondary, the limit is <strong>Level 6</strong>. If only one parent race has access to a class, the limit is <strong>Level 4</strong>.<br /><br />Innate abilities for half-races should be half normal strength, at best. Disadvantages are at half strength unless both parent races have the same disadvantage. Cultural abilities will be based on the culture the character was raised in.<br /><br />I may still have some things to say about custom races in the future.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-53735910564038791182020-05-28T04:30:00.000-07:002020-05-28T04:30:12.217-07:00Custom Fantasy Races: ThoughtsI’ve been reconsidering my method for creating custom fantasy races to create easy to understand rules for <strong>Liber Zero</strong>. Here are my thoughts so far on the steps to create a custom race.<br /><br /><strong>Step 1: Pick Classes Available</strong><br /><br />Each fantasy race is defined by one <em>combat class</em> and one <em>magic-using class</em>, one of these being the <strong>primary class</strong>. Starting characters must choose one of these two classes or any <em>non-combat class</em> based around talents (for example, Thief or Apothecary.) They cannot choose any other class, and if they are <em>magic resistant</em>, they cannot choose any magic-using class.<br /><br />Standard maximum levels for each class are:<br /><ul><li>Primary Class: <strong>Level 8</strong></li><li>Secondary Class: <strong>Level 4</strong></li><li>Non-Combat Class: <strong>Unlimited</strong></li></ul><strong>Exception 1A: Shorter Than Human</strong><br /><br />Combat classes for races that are shorter proportional to human height modify the level limit:<br /><br /><table><thead><tr><th>Proportional Height</th><th></th><th>Primary Class</th><th>Secondary Class</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>3/4ths Human</td><td></td><td><strong>Level 6</strong></td><td><strong>Level 3</strong></td></tr><tr><td>1/2 Human</td><td></td><td><strong>Level 4</strong></td><td><strong>Level 2</strong></td></tr><tr><td>1/4th Human or less</td><td></td><td><strong>Level 2</strong></td><td><strong>Level 1</strong></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><strong>Exception 1B: Clerics or Priests</strong><br /><br />Some settings define Clerics or Priests as part of the hierarchy for human religions. If so, pure non-human races may be forbidden from starting or becoming Clerics/Priests. Variant classes like Shaman or Diabolist might still be open, however.<br /><br /><strong>Step 2: Add Innate Abilities</strong><br /><br />Each race may have one strong or two weak innate abilities, such as:<br /><table><thead><tr><th>Ability</th><th>Weak Version</th><th>Strong Version</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Winged Flight</td><td>full Move</td><td>Move x 2</td></tr><tr><td>Swimming</td><td>half Move</td><td>full Move</td></tr><tr><td>Burrowing</td><td>Move/6</td><td>Move/3</td></tr><tr><td>Climb or Other</td><td>Move/3</td><td>Move/2</td></tr><tr><td>Boosted Sense</td><td>Torch Range/2</td><td>Torch Range</td></tr><tr><td>Resist Heat, etc</td><td>-1 damage/die</td><td>half damage</td></tr></tbody></table><br />A second strong innate ability, or an ability that duplicates a 1st to 3rd level spell effect, requires a disadvantage, such as:<br /><ul><li><strong>Physical Vulnerability</strong> (double damage from heat, cold, poison)</li><li><strong>Attack/Defense Penalty</strong> (in bright light, dry conditions, etc.)</li><li><strong>Slowed Movement</strong> (in daylight, on land, etc.)</li><li><strong>Reaction Penalty</strong> (shift reaction one category worse for one major group)</li><li><strong>Shorter Than Human</strong> (reduce combat class maximums, as per <strong>Exception 1A</strong> above)</li><li><strong>Inherently Unmagical</strong> (unable to begin as a magic-using class)</li></ul>All forms of <strong>Magic Resistance</strong> are usually paired with <strong>Inherently Unmagical</strong>.<br /><ul><li><strong>Save as Level + 4</strong></li><li><strong>Immune to One Spell</strong></li><li><strong>-1 Damage/die from Any Magic</strong></li></ul>The exception would be using an innate magical ability as countermagic to resist an opposed form of magic.<br /><br /><strong>Optional Step 3: Cultural Abilities</strong><br /><br />All non-human races are allowed to take their native language for free. Depending on setting, other languages that are related to or corruptions of their native language may be included.<br /><br />Non-human cultures may also have iconic talents. These may be:<br /><ul><li>Mundane professions, like hunter or sailor,</li><li>bonuses to attack/defense in specific situations</li><li>talents that resemble Thief abilities or other talent-based classes</li></ul>There is no limit on how many professions may be tied to a given culture, other than reasonableness. Bonuses or talents are bundled together and limited to what would be appropriate for a 1st or 2nd level non-magical character class.<br /><br />Characters who are raised by a foreign culture (elves adopted by human parents, for example,) will not have the cultural abilities of their race, but may have any cultural abilities of their adopted culture. They will not learn their native language as a “free” language, but can learn it as an additional language if their intelligence is high enough.<br /><br /><strong>Special Cases</strong><br /><br />Human subraces, “half” races, monster races, and other variations on fantasy races will have to wait for a follow-up post, but will all be close to the guidelines above. Above all else, custom fantasy races should follow the basic principle of changing the feel of a character, rather than being a way to optimize or supercharge a character. They should always limit character options in some way while providing only a small benefit.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-63333371169204124012020-05-26T11:46:00.002-07:002020-05-26T11:46:51.719-07:00Blog Post of Note: Whither the Dungeon?Justin Alexander asks on his blog <a href="https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44578/roleplaying-games/whither-the-dungeon-the-decline-and-fall-of-dd-adventures">Whither the Dungeon?</a>. The subtitle is "The Decline and Fall of D&amp;D Adventures", although I should mention he specifically means "knowledge of how to run adventures". Although indirectly, I suppose the trend he describes affects the <i>quality</i> of adventures as well, as the people writing adventures now are those who never learned how to run adventures, so they don't know what to include or how to present it.<br /><br />I wonder, though, if there is some additional reason for the decline of adventure writing. But perhaps that is a topic for another time.Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-80030409937224807762020-05-25T11:00:00.000-07:002020-05-25T11:00:08.719-07:00Travel SpellbooksRelated to the topic of emergency spell casting is the idea of “travel spellbooks”. These are spellbooks that are small enough to take into dungeons.<br /><br />I never liked this idea.<br /><br />Forget about the size factor. Yeah, I imagine spellbooks to be pretty sizable things, about the size of a shield… but there were portable books in the Middle Ages, mostly prayer books. More important is the way it redesigns the way spells are imagined to work.<br /><br />Magicians aren’t supposed to be prepping spells in the middle of an adventure. They have a limited number of spells they can “take with them”, so to speak. If magicians have full access to every spell they know, there’s less of a challenge for the player, They aren’t making strategic decisions in advance and hoping they picked the right spell. And it makes the class more powerful compared to other characters. Would you let Fighters have access to a “travel armory” to refresh their arrow supply or swap ineffective weapons and armor? Or a “traveling merchant” with an infinite stock of equipment so they can buy some holy water and garlic in the middle of the dungeon which they just found out is swarming with vampires?<br /><br />Also, if travel spellbooks exist, why aren’t all spellbooks travel spellbooks? Why bother with two sets of spellbooks? Why have scrolls, which is a sanctioned way for magicians to have extra spells, if they’re just going to have infinite spells anyways?<br /><br />But there may be a way to have “travel spellbooks” without throwing out the existing spell system and class limitations. Let’s look at the two extremes: scrolls vs. spellbooks, to see where the travel spellbook would fit between the two.<br /><br /><strong>Scrolls:</strong><br /><ul><li>Cost <strong>100 coins per spell level</strong></li><li>Weigh no more than a dagger</li><li>Contain a single spell</li><li>Are consumed when used</li><li>Can be used quickly (1 or more rounds)</li></ul><strong>Spellbooks:</strong><br /><ul><li>Cost <strong>1000 coins x (2^Level)</strong> per spellbook</li><li>Weigh about the same as a shield</li><li>Contain all spells of a given level.</li><li>Are not consumed when used</li><li>Take longer to use (turns or hours)</li></ul>A travel spellbook should be somewhere in the middle, in terms of cost and weight, and have at least one limitation from each extreme.<br /><ul><li>Cost <strong>200 coins x (2^Level)</strong> per spellbook</li><li>Weigh about the same as two scrolls</li><li>Contain a single spell</li><li>Are not consumed when used</li><li>Take longer to use (<strong>2d6 x Spell Level</strong> turns)</li><li>(Use the <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/emergency-spell-casting.html">Emergency Spell Casting</a> rules to speed this up at the risk of variable results)</li></ul>This makes a travel spellbook a way to have a small number of refreshable spells, but because of cost and weight, still enforces the need for players to make strategic decisions.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-19319671725788350952020-05-21T04:00:00.000-07:002020-05-21T04:00:03.030-07:00Emergency Spell Casting: Comparing ApproachesThe Kernel in Yellow has <a href="https://oicn.icu/2020/Emergency-casting/">posted a response</a> to my <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/emergency-spell-casting.html">emergency spellcasting</a> article, so I thought it might be worthwhile to compare the two approaches and discuss tailoring things to your needs.<br /><br />First: the blogger appears to have come to old school play via 5e, in contrast to my background in OD&amp;D and 1e. Background influences your models when making new material. Consider the way we each used “spell slots”, for example.<br /><ul><li>For 5e players, spell slots are a resource to be used. So, The Kernel in Yellow’s approach is to require one spell slot per emergency casting and allow additional slots to be “spent” to improve the spell.</li><li>For me, “spell slot” is an artifact of the way we’re talking about the spell prep process and cannot be “spent” for any reason. So, I treat casting from a book as spell prep and ask "Should there be a difference if the caster were already ‘full’ of prepped spells?’</li></ul>Another example is the way we handle ingredients. In 5e and even in 1e, spell ingredients are pre-defined and <em>necessary</em>. If you stick to that model, then you would want a way to handle finding ingredients in an emergency, as The Kernel in Yellow does. But in OD&amp;D, almost no spells need ingredients when cast. I, however, assume there are untracked, undefined ingredients used during downtime.<br /><br />Then we get to casting time. Do you start with regular spell casting as your model and balance emergency casting by making it slightly longer, but still viable as something you could cast <em>in combat</em>? Or do you start with spell prep times, normally undefined, and try to define them?<br /><br />The tables we each use diverge a lot more. I don’t have a “spell does nothing” effect on my table, and the range of effects aren’t that extreme. 97% of the time, spell casters are going to get more or less the effect they want unless they rush things. Backfires are pretty difficult to get without divine intervention, as is the double-strength maximum result of Fantastic. Kernel in Yellow’s table is aimed more at penalizing emergency casting at least part of the time, to prevent it from being the go-to choice for spell casting. Plus, that <em>Fireworks</em> result is pretty extreme, causing the caster to lose 1 to 4 <em>additional</em> spells.<br /><br />A side note: since I allow learning new spells via <em>Read Magic</em>, some “emergency” spell casting is really going to be experimenting with a spell the caster has never cast before. Sometimes, the spell will be unique and of little use anywhere but in the dungeon. This is one reason I didn’t want to lean too hard on penalizing spell casters who cast from spell books.<br /><br />A lot of the differences can be summarized as “My model is spell prep, Kernel in Yellow’s model is spell casting.” With the second model, your design question is going to be “Why don’t casters always cast spells from spell books?” Your answer will probably be “because the results are usually bad,” and you’ll work to balance it against ordinary, “safe” casting. With the first model, my design question was “What happens when you try to prep a spell in a dungeon, instead of taking your time at your home base?” My answer wound up as “It will probably be a little unpredictable, but not much. Mostly, it’s just annoyingly long, so people rarely do that.”<br /><br />You’ve got to decide which route you want to take: giving players a boost and then balancing that, or giving them something that adds to the rich background details.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-47387337762117356512020-05-18T04:00:00.000-07:002020-05-18T04:00:03.627-07:00Emergency Spell CastingA recent conversation on Twitter got me thinking again about casting spells from spell books. Some people treat spell books as big, expensive magic scrolls, allowing casters to cast spells from them, but with the spell disappearing from the book when cast. I don’t treat them that way. I won’t go into all the details, because it’s something I’ve talked about many times.<br /><br /><em><strong>But</strong></em>… I do like the idea of casting spells <em>with</em> spell books, an emergency spell-casting procedure that takes longer than a normal prepped spell to cast. Only spells the caster knows and could prep for casting can be cast this way. Here is my current thinking on rules for handling this.<br /><br /><strong>Step I: Ingredients</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>If spell prep for spells in your campaign involves burning things, pouring libations, ritual sacrifices, or any other physical components, the caster needs to have these handy, or scavenge around for them. The easiest way to handle this, to me, would be to set a monetary value of ingredients needed and materials available. For example, spells might require 20 coins worth of common ingredients per spell level, and casters can spend a turn in any non-empty room to scavenge: roll <strong>1d6</strong>, 5+ means 20 coins value has been found, otherwise add 1 to result for number of coins worth found. Inhabited rooms might double or triple the value found, magic labs will multiply by 10.<br /><br /><strong>Step II: Casting Time</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>GM rolls casting time in secret: <strong>1d6 x Spell Level</strong>, in turns. Players say how long they chant and perform rituals. If they don’t meet the necessary time, the spell is a <em>miscast</em> If they meet or exceed it, it is a success.<br /><br /><strong>Step III: Spell Effect</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>GM makes a reaction roll: <strong>2d6 on Spell Effect Table</strong> for a successful cast, but only <strong>1d6</strong> for a miscast. If the caster would not be able to prep the spell (in other words, doesn’t have an empty spell slot for the spell being cast,) shift the result up one line, making the spell effect one category worse. A <em>blessed</em> caster shifts the result down one line, making the spell effect one category better.<br /><br /><table><thead><tr><th>2d6 Roll</th><th>Effect</th><th>Detailed Explanation</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>0</td><td><strong>Major Backfire</strong></td><td>Random spell and random target.</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td><strong>Backfire</strong></td><td>Random target, benefits are reversed.</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td><strong>Minor Backfire</strong></td><td>Random target.</td></tr><tr><td>3-5</td><td><strong>Fizzle</strong></td><td>Half normal strength.</td></tr><tr><td>6-8</td><td><strong>Weak</strong></td><td>1 point weaker.</td></tr><tr><td>9-11</td><td><strong>Normal</strong></td><td>Standard spell effect.</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td><strong>Strong</strong></td><td>1 point better.</td></tr><tr><td>13+</td><td><strong>Fantastic</strong></td><td>Double normal strength.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />I’ve talked before about randomizing spell targets: everyone rolls a d6, and the GM rolls a d6 for the spell. Anyone whose roll matches the spell’s roll is affected. On this table, a <strong>major backfire</strong> randomizes the spell as well; easiest way to do this is to roll 2d6 and subtract 7 from the result, then count backwards or forwards on the list of spells to get the replacement.<br /><br />A <strong>fizzled</strong> spell does half damage, lasts half as long, travels half as far, and is otherwise half strength in every way. A <strong>fantastic</strong> spell effect is the opposite, doubling strength in every way. A <strong>weak</strong> or <strong>strong</strong> spell decreases or increases damage, duration, distance, and so on by a tiny degree, but never as low as half the minimum or more than the 1.5 x maximum effect.<br /><br /><strong>Notes on Time and Cost</strong><br /><strong><br /></strong>Time above is given in <em>turns</em>, so that whether you use ten-minute turns, one-minute-turns, or something else, the rules will automatically scale to whatever you use… as long as normally a prepared spell requires one turn or less to cast. If you have adjusted either casting time or prep time so that it is not based on this assumption, you may have to throw in an extra multiplier to make sure emergency casting takes longer than standard spell casting or spell prep.<br /><br />Costs are given in <em>coins</em>, which will be copper, silver, or gold, depending on whatever standard you are using for common equipment prices in your campaign. The assumption is that “material components” are used during spell prep, but not spell casting, and most spells have unnamed commonly available components.<br /><br />If some spell levels have much higher ingredient costs, you can add a multiplier for different spell level ranges, for example:<br /><ul><li><strong>Spell Levels 1-3</strong>: Standard cost (20 coins per level)</li><li><strong>Spell Levels 4-6</strong>: High cost (100 coins per level)</li><li><strong>Spell Levels 7-9</strong>: Very High cost (500 coins per level)</li></ul><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-59843747683060895082020-05-14T04:00:00.000-07:002020-05-14T04:00:05.464-07:00Magic Item Charges and Reaction RollsThis is an update to an idea in <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2013/11/re-doing-wands-without-charges.html">Wands Without Charges</a>, eliminating the need to track charges in wands or other magic items. I’ve prettied things up in this nice little reaction table, which you roll the first time an item is used and on future uses.<br /><br /><table><thead><tr><th>2d6 Roll</th><th>Charge</th><th>When to Check Again</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>2</td><td><strong>Drained</strong></td><td>Last use. No further rolls.</td></tr><tr><td>3-5</td><td><strong>Weak</strong></td><td>Roll again before each use.</td></tr><tr><td>6-8</td><td><strong>Normal</strong></td><td>Roll again another day.</td></tr><tr><td>9-11</td><td><strong>Strong</strong></td><td>Roll again next week.</td></tr><tr><td>12</td><td><strong>Full</strong></td><td>Roll again next month.</td></tr><tr><td>13+</td><td><strong>Endless</strong></td><td>Never check normally.</td></tr></tbody></table><strong><br /></strong><strong>Explanations</strong><br /><br />A <strong>weak</strong> or <strong>drained</strong> magic item glows feebly, sputters, or otherwise indicates it’s about fail. If <em>drained</em>, the item will work that one time, but won’t work again. If <em>weak</em>, it can be used at least once more, but from now on, a roll must be made every time the item is used, ignoring Normal or higher results.<br /><br />A <strong>normal</strong>, <strong>strong</strong>, or <strong>full charge</strong> does not have a feeble glow, sputtering, or other low charge indication. Because there are plenty of charges left, there’s no need for a new roll if the item is used again on the same day, week, or month, as indicated by the result. Ignore results higher than previous rolls; items never increase in charge, only decrease.<br /><br />Players can tell the difference between low-charge (weak or drained) and high-charge (normal, strong or full) by observation or by casting something like <strong>Detect Magic</strong>, which will reveal either a weak or strong magic aura. They can’t distinguish anything more detailed without using <strong>Contact Other Plane</strong> or similar spell.<br /><br />After rolling for the item once, make a note of the item name with a <strong>d</strong>, <strong>w</strong>, or <strong>m</strong> in parentheses after the first roll to indicate whether to check daily, weekly, or monthly.<br /><br /><strong>Curses and Blessings</strong><br /><br />If a <em>cursed</em> character uses a magic item, or any character uses it in a cursed area, a <strong>Drained</strong> result becomes a magical backfire. Beneficial effects (Wand of Healing) are reversed. Harmful effects affect random targets, possibly even the caster. The item is also drained as normal, unless it is a blessed (Endless) item.<br /><br />If a magic item is used in a <em>blessed</em> area, the charge level doesn’t decrease as quickly. The first time a lower charge result is rolled, ignore it. If the item is used again in the area and a lower charge result is rolled on that attempt, the item depletes as normal.<br /><br />The same applies to a <em>blessed</em> character except when an item is used for the very first time. In that case, add +1 to the 2d6 roll. This prevents a blessed character from draining an item on the first try and also allows the possible <strong>Endless</strong> result. A magic item with endless charges is basically an artifact and will never be drained under normal circumstances. Curses can force a reroll, and artifact items might have mysterious demands that must be met to continue uninterrupted use.<br /><br /><strong>Wands</strong><br /><br />Magic wands typically have more charges than other charged items. When a wand is first used, a <em>Normal</em> result is treated as a <em>Strong</em> result (check again in a week.)<br /><br />Optionally, if a spell-caster has a spell prepared that duplicates the wand’s effects, the <em>Drained</em> result is treated as <em>Weak</em> instead. Once that spell is used, however, the wand loses that benefit.<br /><br /><strong>Cantrip Wands</strong><br /><br />Cantrip Wands cast very low level magical effects, but have weaker magic. Shift all results one category worse: <strong>Fully-Charged</strong> cantrip wands check every week, <strong>Strong</strong> cantrip wands check every day, <strong>Normal</strong> cantrip wands check each time they are used, and any <strong>Weak</strong> result means the wand is drained.<br /><br /><strong>Magic Staff</strong><br /><br />A magic staff is more powerful than a wand. The first time a staff is used, shift the results one category better: <strong>Drained</strong> is treated as <strong>Weak</strong>, <strong>Weak</strong> is treated as <strong>Normal</strong>, and so on. A <strong>Fully-Charged</strong> result is still treated as “Roll again next month”, however, unless the player is <em>blessed</em> as noted above.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-27223477763624644592020-05-11T08:41:00.001-07:002020-05-11T08:41:55.270-07:00Blog Post of Note: Dungeons & Dragons at a DistanceJon Peterson's <b>Playing at the World</b> blog has a post called&nbsp;<a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2020/05/dungeons-dragons-at-distance-early-play.html">Dragons at a Distance: Early Play-by-Mail D&amp;D</a>, which may seem especially relevant these days. One question I wonder about is whether anyone was running a mix play-by-mail/play by phone campaign back in the day. Regular long-distance phone calls would have been too expensive back then, but you could imagine someone handling exploration and negotiation through the mail, switching to phone when a combat breaks out.<br /><br />These days, people do Discord/Skype/Hangouts/Zoom, but that generally requires scheduling a session. One could imagine handling a larger number of players via email, with players teaming up as their schedules permit for actual expeditions.Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-58004961912347660102020-05-07T11:18:00.002-07:002020-05-07T11:18:50.062-07:00Half-Races: What Are They Good For?<p>I posted the <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/orc-and-half-orc-player-characters.html">orc and half-orc races</a> because of some thread necromancy on a forum. I had added them as a comment to the thread ages ago, but more recent additions to the thread raised a side issue: Which races have “half-race” versions, and what does that even mean? What is a half-race even good for?</p><p>I think the first interpretation most people jump to is that a half-race is the offspring of one human parent and one non-human parent. Tolkien introduced half-elf and half-orc concepts that were based on crossbreeding, which makes sense in his world where fantastic beings are given more naturalistic explanations. Elves, orcs, and presumably dwarves mate and have children, just like humans, although there are very few female members and no children for any of those races described in the books. There are hobbit children, however, and more hobbit women than human women mentioned.</p><p>Roll back a bit to Arthurian romance. It’s not entirely clear whether the fay are a biological race or more like a blessing or curse that happens within some human bloodlines, but Arthur’s half-sister Morgan La Fay is in theory at least partly non-human, and her nephew (and Arthur’s nephew) Gawain seems to have some supernatural gifts as well. Whatever the explanation of what a “fay” really is, it would be represented as a race in OD&amp;D, and some characters like Gawain might be considered half-fay, which would mean “less fay” and not necessarily “a fay half-breed”.</p><p>Similarly, changelings in fairy lore are not the offspring of human and a fairy, but are fairy replacements for human children. In at least one fairy story I’ve read, a human child who doesn’t quite fit in with his community turns out to be a changeling, which raises the possibility of using half-elves to represent elves who pass as human and are possibly raised by human parents.</p><p>Farther back in myth and legend, we have a number of half-human, half-animal races, like centaurs, satyrs, and the Minotaur, which are not necessarily human/animal hybrids (although they could be, like the Minotaur,) but may be descendants of a cursed ancestor, or spontaneously generated in some way. There are some old legends of pregnant women being startled or attacked by an animal and later giving birth to a child bearing some features of that animal. This could be considered an alternative fantastic origin of half-beast characters, if you would rather not have cross-breeding between humans and animals.</p><p>Another example would be a monster that is transformed into a human or near-human, retaining some of their monstrous characteristics. For example, Norse sagas mention a hero, Starkad, who is technically a Jotun who passes as a human. He lives three times as long as a human, either because of his Jotun nature or because of a gift from Odin, depending on the version of the story. The ants transformed into human warriors (Myrmidons) would be another example.</p><p>What these all share is the feature of being halfway between a human and a beast, monster, or nonhuman race. Any of these examples could be incorporated into D&amp;D as half-races.</p><p><img src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons license"></p><blockquote><p>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br>Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br>International</a><br>(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</p></blockquote> Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-22507295040898202772020-05-05T01:00:00.000-07:002020-05-05T01:00:13.447-07:00Orc and Half-Orc Player CharactersAnother thing I made and forgot to post here: write-ups for the orc and half-orc races.<br /><br /><strong>Orc</strong><br /><br />Orc characters can begin as either a Fighter (max level 8) or <a href="https://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/05/shaman-class-cleric-variant.html">Shaman</a> (max level 4.) If thieves or other skilled professional classes are available, orcs can begin as one of those classes instead, with no maximum level. If nonhuman multiclassing is allowed (as in Supplement II: Greyhawk,) orcs can multiclass as any of these classes.<br /><br />Because of their brutish nature, orcs receive stronger negative reactions from humans, elves, dwarves and halflings: shift reaction down one category (Very Good becomes Good, Good become Neutral, Neutral becomes Bad, and Bad becomes Very Bad.) Reactions from other orcs or from underworld races are unaffected.<br /><br />In direct sunlight, orcs are at -1 on all actions and saves. The orcish sense of smell is sharper than a human’s, allowing them to detect enemies even in total darkness, same range as a lantern.<br /><br />Orcs speak the languages of elves, hobgoblins, and gnolls, in addition to their own language and the common language.<br /><br /><strong>Half-Orcs</strong><br /><br />Half-Orc characters can begin as either a Fighter (max level 8,) Cleric or Shaman (max level 6 for either,) or Magic-User (max level 4.) They are unlimited in level in the professional classes like Thief.<br /><br />Because they are able to partially pass as human, half-orcs do not get negative reactions that are as strong as those towards full orcs. Humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings never have a better reaction than Good, but do not otherwise shift reactions down a category.<br /><br />Half-orcs have no penalty in bright sunlight. They can detect enemies by smell as would an orc, but at half the range.<br /><br />Half-orcs speak the same languages as the parent who raised them.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-3287581903222803632020-05-04T01:00:00.000-07:002020-05-04T01:00:02.407-07:00Shaman Class (Cleric Variant)Was reminded that I’d done a write-up for a cleric variant class, but never posted it here. It’s the Shaman.<br /><br /><strong>Concept:</strong> Semi-professional priest, able to deal with spirits and aid members of their tribe or community, but not part of a religious hierarchy or formal temple.<br /><br /><strong>Alignment:</strong> Any.<br /><br /><strong>XP/HD:</strong> As Hybrid (Cleric) class. Primary ability is Wisdom.<br /><br /><strong>Saves:</strong> As Cleric class.<br /><br /><strong>Weapons and Armor:</strong> Trained in any weapons purchased when character is created. Missile weapons are allowed.<br /><br /><strong>Abilities:</strong> Cast spells as would a cleric, but remove any spells related to alignment (Protection from Evil is allowed, however.) Instead of turning undead, a shaman can command wild beasts to obey, turning or taming them. Any tame beasts count against Charisma as would a special follower.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-36830074227228091822020-04-30T21:38:00.000-07:002020-04-30T21:41:14.415-07:00Stranger Things Review, Part IIHere’s Part II of my review and analysis of <strong>Stranger Things</strong>.<br /><a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/04/review-stranger-things-seasons-1-3-part.html">Part I of the review</a> was posted earlier. Again, there may be mild spoilers, although I think I did a reasonably good job in Part II. Still, you might want to skip this if you haven’t watched Seasons 1 to 3 yet.<br /><br />I said previously that I had to re-watch Seasons 1 and 2 before watching Season 3 because I’d forgotten everything. Why?<br />Consider the typical episode of a one-hour drama series. Not counting commercials, it’s between 42 and 45 minutes long. The plot of the episode is set up in the first five minutes, rises through 30-some minutes, then is resolved, leaving another five minutes to wrap up (and possibly set up further episodes.) In a two-hour movie, the numbers are more like 10 to 20 minutes set-up, 90+ minutes of rising action leading to a climax and resolution, then 10+ minutes of wrap-up.<br /><br />That first five or so minutes has to hook you, get you interested in the story and tell you what to look forward to. The ending is the pay-off you wait for.<br /><br />For a season of <strong>Stranger Things</strong>, the episodes are about the same length as an hour-format TV drama, but the story is told over the entire season. That’s a little over six hours of drama. The set-up is the first episode. The last episode is the climax and resolution, with the last 10 to 15 minutes wrapping up any loose ends and setting up the next season. That leave the middle episodes – about four and a half hours – to tell the meat of the story.<br /><br />But the pattern of a typical “middle episode” is:<br /><ul><li>Resolve the cliffhanger from the previous episode (about five minutes.)</li><li>Continue the story, usually via three points of view.</li><li>In the last 2-3 minutes, set up the next episode with a cliffhanger. This is where the actual “hook” is for most episodes, other than the first and last.</li></ul>There’s actually little to no resolution of any main conflicts during an episode. It’s mostly a slow revelation of the facts behind the mystery, with each cliffhanger adding more to the mystery. The only conflicts resolved in episodes 2 to 7 are side conflicts, emotional conflicts between characters. Some of these emotional conflicts, like the Season 1 love triangle, would be one episode of a half-hour sitcom, if they were told separate from the supernatural thriller plotline. But the scenes of the subconflict are spread across the entire season, not one or two episodes.<br /><br />In short, no one episode is a story in and of itself. The entire six-hour season is one story, both plot and subplots. You don’t feel a hook, build-up, climax, and resolution for each episode, but a stretched-out story. True, it has a relentless, driving quality to it and can keep you watching, but as I said in the previous post, it’s <em>tiring</em>. You keep getting hooked at the end of every episode, but nothing is resolved, and everything in the middle is presented with about the same level of intensity, so it’s emotionally exhausting.<br /><br />Which means that you remember about as many moments from this entire six-hour story as you would from a one-hour episode of a typical TV drama.<br /><br />There’s also that bit about the three points of view. <strong>Stranger Things</strong> follows the pattern of showing the audience a mystery at the beginning of a season, then splitting the characters up into three (or more!) groups and revealing a different slice of the mystery to each group. Once the groups have collected about as much as they can without overlap, they unite, share info, and realize the full details of what’s going on, then come up with a plan to deal with it.<br /><br />That’s fine for Season 1. But then they repeat that formula for Season 2, just with different members in each group. And then they remix the groups and repeat the formula for Season 3.<br /><br />And that’s not all that gets repeated. The primary group in Season 1, the one with the main characters, meets a stranger, and has to deal with interpersonal conflicts over whether she should be part of their group or not. In Season 2, the main characters meet a new stranger and have to deal with interpersonal conflicts over whether she should be part of their group. Thankfully, they don’t repeat that part of the formula <em>exactly</em> in Season 3, although there are a few more new characters added to the group (and <em>minor</em> conflict over one character we don’t actually see until the end.<br /><br />Season 1’s plot revolves around one main character being missing most of the season. Season 2 has a different main character missing for most of the season. Season 3 doesn’t have any prolonged absences, but some main characters can’t find other main characters for a few episodes. It’s mostly a matter of missed connections/not being near a phone or radio, though.<br /><br />In Season 2 and 3, a minor character (same one in both seasons) tells two main characters that they should hook up romantically, to resolve that romantic subplot. I mean, <em>come on</em>.<br /><br />In Seasons 2 and 3, several themes are introduced and then quickly dropped. We get introduced to two new characters in Season 2. No mention of their family, a couple cryptic references to their relationship and their past. For a long while, I thought they were runaways, until we see the parents near the end of the season. We get enough details about them at that point that we see there could have been more of a subplot there, but we get nothing. It’s dropped.<br /><br />We get a set-up for a theme of grief for one character in Season 3 … and then a few episodes later, it’s gone and forgotten. No further mention.<br /><br />What I’m saying is: we’re getting lazier writing and unsatisfactory resolutions to themes and subplots as the series continues, but have to put the same amount of work in, more than a typical TV series, for these diminishing returns. It’s still entertaining. No series can be perfect. But it is a good example of why the typical streaming series leaves a lot to be desired.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-56293130242903878622020-04-30T11:08:00.002-07:002020-04-30T11:11:01.714-07:00Review: Stranger Things (Seasons 1-3), Part IHave been involved in a couple threads about media on other blogs (frex <a href="http://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2020/04/on-carrie-bradshaw-and-frodo-baggins.html">Monsters and Manuals on “Unlikeable” Frodo</a> and <a href="https://pitsperilous.blogspot.com/2020/04/lovecraft-scared-not-scary.html">Pits Perilous on Lovecraft not being scary</a>.) And I finally got caught up last night on <strong>Stranger Things</strong>, so I thought I’d sort of half-review, half critically examine that today.<br /><br />There will probably be mild spoilers, but I don’t plan on discussing too much of the plot. Just be warned.<br /><br /><strong>Stranger Things</strong> is, as others have noted, primarily driven by '80s nostalgia. It’s basically “What if we do Steven King, but go full Lovecraft, and also mix it with every '80s sci-fi/horror movie trope?” A downside to this is that it’s not really scary, more like a sci-fi themed mystery with a bit of a dark vibe. Especially because a lot of the look and plot of it is driven by elements pulled from '80s movies and even a couple late '70s movies: <strong>Alien</strong> and John Carpenter’s <strong>The Thing</strong> provide a lot of the visual design for the monsters. The character of Eleven and the government conspiracy that created the problems in the first place are mainly pulled from <strong>Firestarter</strong> and <strong>ET</strong> (with a lot of scenes echoing scenes from the latter especially.) The main characters and their relationships are patterned after <strong>The Goonies</strong> and <strong>Stand By Me</strong>. So, if you’ve seen those movies, you’re not going to be surprised by a single thing in the series, but if you love those movies, you’ll probably like the series, too, just by virtue of the Transitive Property of Nostalgia.<br /><br />I’m not going to nitpick the series, because (1) there’s already too many “critics” taking that lazy man’s path to entertainment, (2) nitpicks almost always turn out to be wrong in some sense, and (3) the so-called mistakes are irrelevant if the story and presentation are strong enough to sweep up the audience and carry them along in their current. But there are some broad thematic problems with the series and some problems with its execution.<br /><br />One theme that’s pretty much standard in any well-made TV series is “family”. In <strong>Stranger Things</strong>, there’s a focus on two literal families: the seemingly dysfunctional family of Will Byers that turns out to have a strong core, and the seemingly perfect family of Mike Wheeler which kind of falls apart except for Mike and his sister Nancy, who develop a stronger bond. There’s also the figurative family based on friendship, which begins with a literal D&amp;D adventuring party and expands as the series continues. There’s also a series-long exploration of Eleven and who her family was, is, or will be, and Max’s really messed-up family, the adopted criminal family of Kali which nevertheless loves each other dearly…<br /><br />Yeah, family.<br /><br />And a lot of other themes that tie into family. For the first season, the main focus is on loss (the Byers and the “Party” lose Will, Nancy loses Barb, and a lot of time is spent trying to find them, either alive or dead.) The secondary focus is on trust, particularly as expressed in the slogan “Friends don’t lie.” In the second season, there’s more about loss (Will losing Eleven) and trust (Eleven and Hopper’s relationship,) but they also add jealousy and romance, especially with the addition of Max and two love triangles. There’s a lot about the strains of adding new members to a family dynamic, and grief in the beginning of the third season, and maybe a couple other themes get added as well.<br /><br />But the problem, as you may have begun to guess, is that they keep adding supporting themes but not really handling them well. The family theme is always there and always strong, which is good. The first season is the strongest thematically, since there’s only two supporting themes and they each have multiple tie-ins. The second season starts getting a little muddled because of the new themes added, but not fully integrated. The third season adds new material kind of haphazardly.<br /><br />And the reason why they aren’t handling the themes well is because of the fundamentally bad design behind a “TV” series that is not meant to be watched on TV, but is meant for binge-watching via a streaming service. See, a real TV series is meant to be watched in a serial fashion, one episode at a time, and you have to wait for the next episode. So, the episodes are designed to have stand-alone stories that tie into a larger story, the season arc or series arc. Each episode will have an A plot, a B plot, and possibly a very small C plot, and there will only be two themes at most in an episode. If there is a C plot, it will mirror the theme of either the A or B plot, basically acting as support. There can be more than two themes in a season, but they are only dealt with two at a time, to avoid distracting the viewer from immersion in the story.<br /><br />But “Binge TV” isn’t designed like that. Instead, it’s designed as if it were one very long movie that you watch in pieces. This is because someone decided that the best way to get people hooked on streaming entertainment was to get them to watch one show in a four-to-eight-hour time block, in one or two sittings. They are thinking like network programmers, who try to use popular shows as strong lead-ins to other shows and lock viewers in to watching their network for the rest of the evening. Except, of course, since streaming services are on-demand and viewers can theoretically watch any random thing after finishing the current episode, viewers can also theoretically watch any random thing on <em>another</em> streaming service, or on a broadcast or cable network, as their next thing… so the only way to guarantee “ratings” is to lock the viewer into one entire show for the rest of the evening.<br /><br />The consequence of that kind of thinking is that individual episodes of a streaming series aren’t very distinct. They aren’t interesting <em>by themselves</em>, but only in the context of the season as a whole. It’s worse for some series, where it often feels like a one- or two-hour episode of a traditional TV series that’s been padded out to run eight hours. (Side note: I think that was the real problem with <strong>Iron Fist</strong>: it wasn’t that Danny was too whiny, but that <em>nothing was happening</em> for long stretches of time.)<br /><br />In <strong>Stranger Things</strong>, it’s not as bad as that. The story keeps happening, and there’s always stuff to pay attention to. But since none of the episodes can stand alone, none of the episodes stand out, either, except for the opening and closing episodes of each season and maybe the second season episode about Eleven in the big city. And as a result, it’s kind of hard to remember many of the details. I took so long to watch Season 3 because when it first came out, it had been a year since I’d watched the previous seasons and I’d pretty much forgotten <em>everything</em>. I had to find time to “re-binge” the rest of the series before binging Season 3. And I find binge-watching hard to do, because the structure of a streaming like <strong>Stranger Things</strong> is just … <em>tiresome</em>.<br /><br />Looks like I’m going to have more to say on this, so I’ll finish up my review (and try to make it relevant to D&amp;D) tomorrow.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-30275394981763220212020-04-27T10:27:00.002-07:002020-04-27T10:27:46.190-07:00Dark Balls and Red Eye Mode<p>No post of substance today, because I got curious about this output from <a href="https://talktotransformer.com/">Talk to Transformer</a>. My input is in bold. I have questions…</p><blockquote><p><strong>If your map of the dungeon is torn,</strong> you can use<br>Adventure Mode to reroll. The only exception is that if<br>you have a red eye in the Dungeon Map, you cannot<br>pick up the recipe from the Old Man if you roll while<br>having a red eye in your party (since he will always be<br>in the red eye status).</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Returning to the Adventure Mode map to use a lot of<br>HP Boost or Dark Balls will display the “Quiz” like<br>results until you have a proper party.</p></blockquote><blockquote><p>Note: In most cases you can return to the Dungeon<br>Map with Adventure Mode active without having to<br>make another solo run to the boss. You can return to<br>the Dungeon Map without being healed by making an<br>NPC in the small room.</p></blockquote><p>Now, Talk to Transformer was trained on a whole lot of webpages, which is why it is so good at making fake RPG materials: there’s a whole lot of web pages about RPG materials. So T2T must have gotten the ideas for this from somewhere.</p><p>Question is: from where?</p><p>What RPG or computer game has “Dark Balls” that you can use in “Adventure Mode”? Which game has characters that can be in "red eye mode?</p><p>And if the answer is “none that anyone knows of”, what kind of game mechanics could be made from this scrap?</p><p><img src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons license"></p><blockquote><p>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br>Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br>International</a><br>(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</p></blockquote> Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-63371580156747543042020-04-23T08:30:00.000-07:002020-04-23T08:30:05.546-07:00Easy Mapping for PlayersTime to create clear advice for players who are mapping.<br />Players need:<br /><ul><li>Index cards, or</li><li>Squares of paper (for example, US Letter or A4 torn into quarters)</li></ul>Mark the top edge of the first card/square as “North”. This can be either true North or “logical North”, the direction you start out facing as you enter the dungeon.<br /><br />If the entrance starts with a corridor, draw a short line northwards. You can add an arrow on the north end of the line as a reminder of where you started.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hMY0Nn5yv1s/XqDwzR6nw4I/AAAAAAAAHyY/aoe6AbwepGk8tO1wmtorbjKZQxF9Hvn-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/mapping-example2020apr.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1358" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hMY0Nn5yv1s/XqDwzR6nw4I/AAAAAAAAHyY/aoe6AbwepGk8tO1wmtorbjKZQxF9Hvn-gCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/mapping-example2020apr.png" width="271" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Example Player Map</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Draw simple lines for tunnels or passages. Don’t worry about scale. Just make short lines. If you want to keep track of distances, write how many turns you had to walk to get to get to a room or intersection.<br /><br />Don’t draw every turn a passage makes. All you need to know is what direction you started in and what direction you are facing at the end. So, just use a single straight line, two lines if you change direction, or a U-bend if you end facing the opposite direction. This kind of simplified mapping will help with mazes, since you won’t need to map every twist and turn, just where the intersections are.<br /><br />Every passage ends with either a room or an intersection. Mark rooms with short labels. Use these same labels when you make notes about what’s in the room, or if you start a new map for that room.<br /><br />You don’t need to map the layout of a room unless you feel it’s important, for example if the room is two or more levels with exits on both levels, or if there is some kind of barrier dividing the room. When this happens, just grab another card or square of paper, label it with the room label, and sketch the layout. Again, no need to draw to scale.<br /><br />If a passage or room exits reaches the edge of the card or square, add a new label and start a map on a new card. Give it the same label.<br /><br />These cards or squares represent an actual map that the PC is making, even if the “real” map would look very different. If the real map is lost, the GM confiscates the cards. If a piece is torn off and lost or otherwise is unreadable, the GM confiscates one or more cards.<br /><br />If you get lost or don’t know which direction you are facing, start mapping on a new card. Leave the direction off, but treat the top of the map as “logical North”, the direction you choose to face when you start the new map. The GM will give directions from that reference point. Once you figure out the orientation of this new map in relation to your other map(s), you can write “North” on the edge that matches “North” on the other map(s).<br /><br />Posts referenced:<br /><ul><li><a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/to-map-or-not.html">To Map or Not</a></li><li><a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/find-your-own-way.html">Find Your Own Way</a></li><li><a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/04/mapping-maze.html">Mapping a Maze</a></li></ul><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-65105405203053862192020-04-20T12:43:00.001-07:002020-04-20T12:43:51.406-07:00Non-Combat Actions and Open-Ended RoundsThere’s a well-known divide between people who want to abstract combat and those who want to simulate combat. In other words, long rounds vs. short rounds. When simulating combat, you break everything down action by action: one roll equals one swing of your sword, one hack with your ax, one stab with your spear. When abstracting combat (my preferred way,) you bundle multiple actions: one roll determines whether your actions that round were a success.<br /><br />But one thing people sometimes complain about when talking about abstracted combat is what to do about <em>non-combat actions</em> during combat. If using simulated combat, you can just replace one attack with one action. What do you do when each round represents multiple actions?<br /><br />For very quick, simple actions, like drawing a sword, dropping a torch, or any action that can be done while walking or running, they just happen simultaneously. They don’t interfere with combat unless there’s a whole lot of them. If you need a guideline for “how many actions is too many?” assume combatants get at least one action for every 3 points of Dex.<br /><br />A longer, more complex action can’t be done while moving. Combatants get one such action in place of their movement for the round, but can still attack. If they take another action, roll a d6: on 5+, they can still make an attack or try another action. Otherwise, what they’ve done so far took the entire round and they have to wait until the next round. They still get to block, parry, dodge, duck, or take other defensive action for the rest of the round, as well as any simple actions as noted above.<br /><br />This approach means that we can keep the length of a combat round open-ended. It’s about one minute, but could be shorter or longer… we don’t care about the exact length, only when each combatant gets to roll again.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-78515564251214712412020-04-16T10:34:00.001-07:002020-04-16T10:36:43.414-07:00Mapping a MazeIn my <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/04/blog-post-of-note-minotaurs-maze.html">previous post</a>, I wrote:<br /><blockquote>I’m leaning away from treating mazes as skill challenges, myself, but perhaps this is worth thinking about more. Is there a different way to create a feeling of isolation? Can it be done with mapping? Is a feeling of isolation what you, the GM, really want to impart?</blockquote>There were several detailed replies to that, generally favoring either skill challenges or some kind of map reveal/fog of war. I’ve been mulling over my own thoughts on this.<br /><br />First, let’s get this out of the way: I don’t agree with Dyson’s emphasis on a feeling of isolation, and don’t think a skill challenge will help with that, anyways. I think mazes are there to get you lost, period. However you feel about being in a maze is however you feel, but not my concern as a GM. This doesn’t mean that skill challenges aren’t useful for the other factor Dyson mentioned, getting lost. I’m just dismissing part of the discussion that’s not really useful. We’ll focus instead on getting lost.<br /><br />What this all boils down to is an age-old debate about mapping. Some people like it, some don’t, and some are in between. People have suggested things like skill challenges before: Chaosium’s <b>Stormbringer</b>, as I recall, has a Map skill which players roll when trying to get somewhere using a map they’ve made. For BRP/Chaosium-style games, where dungeon-crawling or exploration in general is not usually the focus, this might make sense.<br /><br />I’m more in the “love maps” side of things. But what I find is that describing things for mapping isn’t always handled right. I’ve blown it myself in the early days. On the other side, interpreting descriptions and recording them on a map isn’t always handled in the best manner, either. There’s basically not much advice available for either side of the process. I’ve tried to address this in other posts, for example <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/to-map-or-not.html">To Map or Not</a> and <a href="https://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/find-your-own-way.html">Find Your Own Way</a> (which actually sort of has a skill challenge in it, but only a small one.) But more needs to be done.<br /><br />On the player side, I started advocating something closer to a flow chart than to a precise map. Actually, more like just lines, with an occasional box to write short landmark descriptions like “statue room” or “big pit”.<br /><br />If a player doesn’t feel like mapping a maze when doing a flow chart map, they could try just mapping intersections:<br /><ol><li>Start to draw the line a short distance in the direction you are facing.</li><li>Stop drawing until you get to an intersection. Keep track of turns, though, either mentally or on scratch paper.</li><li>Draw a short extension of the line turning in the new direction as it approaches the intersection.</li><li>Draw stubs of lines indicating possible directions you can take at the intersection.</li><li>Once you make a choice, repeat Steps 2-4 as needed until out of the maze.</li></ol>This records every choice you make, but not every turn made, or how far you’ve actually traveled. It could get confusing if you have to backtrack, though, because lines might cross each other… perhaps you’d need colored pencils, switching colors every time you go back and try a different route.<br /><br />The GM, on the other hand, probably needs a more detailed map, but perhaps I’ll have more thought on this later.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-87113958828932836152020-04-13T11:53:00.001-07:002020-04-13T11:53:16.394-07:00Blog Post of Note: The Minotaur’s MazeDyson Logos has a maze map: <a href="https://dysonlogos.blog/2020/04/13/minotaur-maze/">The Minotaur’s Maze</a>, as well as a discussion on the ways mazes are run. I'm leaning away from treating mazes as skill challenges, myself, but perhaps this is worth thinking about more. Is there a different way to create a feeling of isolation? Can it be done with mapping? Is a feeling of isolation what you, the GM, really want to impart?Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-18104973426676539062020-04-09T10:53:00.000-07:002020-04-09T10:53:09.692-07:00Magic Item: Dragon Egg MaskDragon Egg masks are lost artifacts that look like helmets disguised as large eggs. A human can fit their entire head inside, obscuring everything above the shoulders.<br /><br />The wearer can see glowing silhouettes of any object made of precious metal within 300 paces. Of course, the downside of wearing an egg on one's head is being unable to see anything else. Wearers of Dragon Egg masks must either be lead by a guide or constantly swap the mask for normal headgear when moving.<br /><br />A secondary effect is that dragons are fooled into thinking the mask's wearer is a dragon egg. Whether they can see the wearer's body or just think the egg is floating in mid air is uncertain, as is why they do not question the sudden appearance of a mobile dragon's egg. Dragons do not attack mask wearers, but female dragons have a 5+ on 1d6 chance of trying to sit on the egg.<br /><br />There is conflicting lore about how many masks there are. At least one source suggests there is one mask for each kind of dragon, and each mask only protects the wearer from that type of dragon. Others say the different colorations are purely cosmetic and have no such limitation. One contrary opinion is that there is only one mask, and it changes its appearance to match the type of the nearest dragon, protecting only against that type.Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-53112837341660027692020-04-06T09:27:00.001-07:002020-04-06T09:29:04.975-07:00The Magic of Fullmetal AlchemistNot too long ago, I broke down and watched an anime. I don’t really enjoy anime, so I rarely watch it, even when (or especially when) people rant about how great a particular series or movie is.<br /><br />So, I’d heard people talking about <strong>Fullmetal Alchemist</strong> for a long while, but hadn’t watched it. But I gave one of the series (Brotherhood) a shot and did enjoy it. Sure, it had a lot of the tropes and stylistic flourishes that makes me not like anime, but the series is good in spite of all that, and I like the basic story. Also watched the 2017 film on Netflix. It’s OK, but man, the things they cut out to get right into the action triggered some changes that I think don’t really work.<br /><br />Anyways…<br /><br />One of the things I partly like is the approach to magic – excuse me, “the science of alchemy”. They play fast and loose with the rules they lay down, but there <em>are</em> some rules there: the alchemist constructs a circle of transmutation for the desired effect, contacts the target material, and transmutes it into a new form (limited by the Law of Equivalent Exchange.) In terms of<a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2019/12/using-magic-power-sources-for-custom.html">magic power sources</a>, alchemy is primarily <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2019/12/words-of-power-as-magical-power-source.html">words of power</a> with a little <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2019/12/bound-psychic-powers-as-power-source.html">psychic power</a> on the side: they use drawing symbols instead of speaking ritual phrases, and the “meditation” is brief, but it more or less follows that pattern.<br /><br />State alchemists specialize in a single specific transmutation and wear gloves with the appropriate circle of transmutation already woven into the fabric, so they can perform their one trick over and over on command. They, like alchemists who don’t work for the military, have to do things the slow way if they aren’t doing their one schtick. There are a handful of characters who don’t fit this pattern, the most obvious being Edward and Alphonse, but they basically went through hell to get that ability… and let’s face it, they break the rules because it makes for faster paced, more exciting, over-the-top anime battles. We can basically ignore them.<br /><br />I’d ask if anyone has made a translation of the Fullmetal Alchemy system into D&amp;D rules, but (1) someone probably has, and (2) it’s probably an overly complicated mess. I might have more thoughts on this at a later date.Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-37264392393201300652020-04-03T12:37:00.001-07:002020-04-03T12:38:56.152-07:00What Is Wisdom, Really?I’ll have more to say about overlapping ability scores, but I want to go back and discuss Wisdom some more. On <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/why-i-like-both-wisdom-and-intelligence.html">Why I Like both Wisdom and Intelligence</a>, <strong>PatrickW</strong> had this to say:<br /><blockquote>High INT, low WIS is absent-minded genius.<br />High WIS, low INT is Edith Bunker.<br />The difference is clear.</blockquote>Is it, though?<br /><br />Leaving aside the characterization of Edith Bunker as low INT (she’s clearly way smarter than Archie, possibly smarter than Gloria, and I’d consider Gloria above average,) I don’t think Wisdom means the same thing for those two examples. When I think of smart but foolish characters, I think of mad scientists or socially-awkward geniuses, not characters who forget what time it is or which shoe goes on which foot. But it does raise the question: Does everyone agree what “wisdom” is? Not the ability score with that name, but real-life wisdom, as commonly understood?<br /><br />Take the famous example of Solomon and the two women who both claim the same child is theirs. Solomon tells them that logically, none of the facts support one woman’s claim over the other, so the smart thing to do is divide the child evenly between the two – literally. But his secret wisdom is a gut feeling that the real mother, or at least the one who would be the best mother, would do anything to keep her child from being killed, including giving the child to the other woman. This wasn’t a wholly rational thought process, but just an awareness that the <em>right</em> choice is not what’s best for the two women, but what’s best for the child… and the best mother for any child is one that puts what’s best for the child ahead of her own personal preferences.<br /><br />Another example is the story of the Gordian Knot. Whoever undoes the Gordian Knot will become the ruler of the whole world. Everyone who tries, can’t figure out how to untie it. Only Alexander thinks “Untying the knot is not the point. Removing it as an obstacle is.” And so he just cuts through the knot.<br /><br />There’s a whole lot more that could be said about this. Blurting out the wrong thing in social situations is certainly considered foolish, which means wisdom must include empathy or emotional intelligence as well as intuition. Choosing to do what is moral rather than what is rational is also considered a matter of wisdom over intelligence, which I’d argue is the reason why Gygax made Wisdom the prime ability for Clerics.<br /><br />But I cut through <em>this</em> Gordian Knot by interpreting Wisdom as a sense of right or wrong. Common sense, danger sense, and moral sense, as I’ve said before. If you just know that what you are about to say or do would be <em>wrong</em>, in some sense of that word, and so choose not to do it, regardless of the facts, you are operating on a completely different level than if you’ve weighed all the available facts and reasoned out what the best option is, choosing to do <em>that</em>.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-75154288246056885012020-04-02T08:30:00.000-07:002020-04-02T08:30:05.671-07:00Which Scores Overlap? Part IIn <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/why-i-like-both-wisdom-and-intelligence.html">Why I Like Both Wisdom and Intelligence</a>, I talked about those two scores overlapping and suggested there may be other potential overlaps in the six ability scores. One thing I was thinking of was Strength and Constitution.<br /><br />Most people wouldn’t think of those two ability scores as overlapping. I mean, they are pretty well-defined, aren’t they? Constitution governs health and resistance to physical damage. Strength, on the other hand, is an active ability, rather than a passive one, and governs damage dealt and weight carried.<br /><br />But think about another physical quality that’s pretty important: endurance. How long can a character run, hold up a falling timber, or hold their breath? There are no hard rules for these things in OD&amp;D, so referees have made their own rulings when necessary. Those that hate overlaps probably pick Con for holding breath, Strength for holding up a timber. But I’m willing to use the best of Strength or Con when trying to judge those situations.<br /><br />A few people have felt the need for a separate Endurance stat to cover this. Some RPGs even treat this as a calculated stat, an average between two other stats like Strength and Con. A good way to look at overlaps is to ask “in games that use derived stats, what stats are considered derived? Which stats do they use as their parent stats?” My preference is to just use the parent stats directly, either the highest or lowest of two as the situation calls for it.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-78903499297578507802020-03-30T10:13:00.001-07:002020-03-30T10:14:12.553-07:00Why I Like both Wisdom and IntelligenceI have no major topic for today, so I’ll turn to a minor topic: overlapping abilities.<br /><br />There’s a forum discussion about what people would pick for a seventh ability, if they were to add one, and a side topic that showed up was a complaint about Intelligence and Wisdom being “the same thing”. But of course, they <em>aren’t</em> the same thing. They just overlap. And I love ability overlaps.<br /><br />Let’s start from the conventional wisdom (har!) that Intelligence and Wisdom are the same thing. OK, but people’s scores for those abilities are usually not the same. That means that sometimes, the GM may say “You have a chance of noticing this in time if you have high Intelligence” and you will say “I don’t, but I have high Wisdom. Does that count?” Having <em>two</em> chances of rolling a high score is better than one, right?<br /><br />But of course, Intelligence and Wisdom aren’t the same. We don’t need to go into detail about how they are different, here, since there are several different interpretations, although most involve Intelligence being linked to learned information and Wisdom being more instinctive. The real point is: whatever the difference, there are going to be some situations where that difference is going to matter, where having a high Intelligence won’t matter in a situation, but a high Wisdom will.<br /><br />By the book, high Intelligence matters when trying to control a magic sword with a high Ego, but Wisdom doesn’t matter at all. Other situations will depend on how a GM actually interprets the difference, but they <em>will</em> exist.<br /><br />And going back to situations where either score would be useful, which score is higher will inform the player on how to play the character, and inform the GM on how the character was able to escape the situation: “You recognized the markings on the beast from an old biological treatise” vs. “You had a bad feeling about the creature” or “A small angelic voice warned you about the danger just in time.”<br /><br />This is why I sometimes wish for more overlap in ability scores. But maybe there’s already some overlap hidden in the existing system? This may be a topic I will return to later.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7239577512598038009.post-86621796989330734882020-03-26T08:30:00.000-07:002020-03-26T08:30:13.918-07:00Thoughts on Fantasy Races IIContinuing with my <a href="http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.com/2020/03/thoughts-on-fantasy-races-i.html">thoughts on fantasy races</a>… Previously, I talked about what different editions did with races <em>functionally</em>, what races do <em>mechanically</em>, which we can summarize as:<br /><ul><li><strong>OD&amp;D</strong> gives races minor additional benefits and serious limitations.</li><li><strong>B/X</strong> drops the limitations and treats races as specialty classes.</li><li><strong>AD&amp;D</strong> turn races into ways to optimize ability scores, which becomes the dominant post-AD&amp;D paradigm.</li></ul>But what are races <em>actually for</em>, from a player’s perspective? Why do players choose to play a fantasy race, instead of a human?<br /><br />For <strong>OD&amp;D</strong>, where the benefits are slight, players mostly choose fantasy races for fun. They want to be an elf because one of their favorite characters is an elf, or they have an idea of how to play an elf that seems fun. Or it’s not a specific race, but specific abilities they like: they want to fly and breathe fire, so they get GM approval to play a balrog. Or they just want some variety, because they’ve been playing a narrow range of characters and want something different. In some cases, players might ask play fantasy races that have no special features at all, such as goblins.<br /><br />The same can be true for other versions of D&amp;D, but since <strong>B/X</strong> and other “race as class” versions start to focus a little more on abilities, you start seeing more people choosing races for the benefits they get. This trend gets stronger in the <strong>AD&amp;D</strong> line and the WotC versions of D&amp;D or their descendants. Many players in this branch of D&amp;D pick races that provide the best benefit for the class they want to play, or to help balance the party, for example to guarantee the party has someone who can see in the dark (in contrast to OD&amp;D, which doesn’t allow PCs or their companions to have infravision as an innate ability.)<br /><br />Now, different people like different things, so this isn’t a judgment of which path is “right”. However, as I brought up in a comment when I discussed my feelings about “race as class”, I have specific needs and desires for what I want out of a race. I see fantasy races from the “play something different for a change” perspective that I associate with <strong>OD&amp;D</strong>. I do not want to promote fantasy races as an optimization technique. I’ve probably ranted enough about system vs. fiction that this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. I don’t want players to think about the rules first and then imagine a situation that fits the rules. I want it to be the other way around… so I definitely don’t want players to pick the best race for their class, or the best race to fill a niche in the party’s abilities.<br /><br />I want players to play the races they think would be fun. I want them to have variety.<br /><br /><img alt="Creative Commons license" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /><br /><blockquote>This work is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_US">Creative Commons<br />Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0<br />International</a><br />(CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.</blockquote>Talysmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02162328521343832412noreply@blogger.com3